I tried to post this over at my former sponsor “Youpic” but.. their infrastructure is really crappy. The site is promoted as having everything you want and nothing you don’t want but their blog functionality.. the (in)ability to functionally post videos and the fact that only if you pay will you get recognized means~ to me~ the site isn’t all that grown up.
But.. what did I try to post?
I discovered that Andre Roussel, also known as Beloqa (? I’ll have to double check that) passed away early in 2019.
why did this come as a surprise to me?
I’d been kind of “out of the game” for a long time.. the more I delved in to the world of commercial painting, the less time I spent behind the lens.. the less time I spent doing things that meant something to me. Prior to that, I would almost wait for a new photographic post from this artist.. over at “deviantart.”
So, just before I posted the attempt at YouPic.. I decided I wanted to do a “series” that tried to examine the old guard and where they went. If they went anywhere.
I knew of several Vancouver shooters who were gone.. WH Henning was gone, that I knew. And the photographer that has the initial “E” .. gone. They all bought in to early era digital gear and spent thousands on the equipment.. printers, camera bodies, lenses.. the only thing I thought was worth the money being the lenses of course.
I remember the last time I talked to WH Henning.. he was worried that he’d have to go back to “regular” work as photography just wasnt cutting it and he had sunk a pretty penny in to the gear.. the studio.. and it just wasnt giving him the payday he sought.
Anyhow.. I decided to look in to Andre Roussel to see where he was. I knew him from Deviantart so I started there.. and that’s where the annoucnement was- right on his profile. He’d passed away early in 2019.
It kind of brought me back to a more sober aspect of reality I guess you could say. He wasn’t old.. and he did have a certain style of work.. and it was no more. The fact that he passed with little or no fanfare was kind of surprising.. the company “Deviantart” didn’t make note of it anywhere.. and I can’t find any notices online. I do know he was in Montreal and I am planning on being there next year so, I hope to visit his gravesite and do my own memorialization at that time.
It’s reality and now that I’m growing closer to the end as opposed to the beginning I’m seeing it as such.. no fanfare will be made at my passing. I don’t think.
Some day perhaps someone will write something like this about me.
